A little background on the Shearer-Drumheller-Blumenthal private "intelligence" service and some of their previous work. You might see a familiar name if you scan down to the discussion of Cody Shearer.

That's right, Christopher Steele gave it to the FBI. Apparently Steele was being used to try to legitimize oppo files from very shady partisan hatchet men.

The Guardian reports that Steele passed the so-called
"Shearer memo" -- compiled by Cody Shearer -- to the FBI in October 2016. Steele, an ex-MI6 officer, had been given the document by an American contact who is unnamed in The Guardian report.

According to the newspaper, Steele told the FBI that he could not verify the information in the memo, but he said that he gave the bureau a copy because some of the information in it matched up with what he had reported in his own dossier.

Mostly the claim about the Pee-Pee Party with Prostitutes, we'll learn later.

In fact, one begins to to wonder if the Shearer "memo" was the basis for Steele's claim about this, given that they seemed to have a cut-out connecting them. Or perhaps they got this claim from the same source, who was directed to them by someone in Hillary's orbit.

Shearer denies having anything to do with the Steele Dossier.

Well, time will tell.

...

Steele's unverified dossier was reportedly used by the FBI and Justice Department in an application for a surveillance warrant taken out against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

It is unclear from The Guardian's reporting whether the Shearer memo was also used to justify the surveillance warrant.

The Shearer memo contained allegations that Trump was compromised in 2013 after engaging with prostitutes at a Moscow hotel. Steele’s first memo, dated June 20, 2016, alleged that Kremlin operatives had video recordings of Trump with prostitutes and that the footage was being used to blackmail the former real estate executive.

The Guardian further reports that the FBI is still looking into the Shearer memo.

Shearer has a long history with the Clintons, and his involvement in investigating Trump is likely to raise questions about his dossier’s impartiality.

"He's a hatchet man for Hillary Clinton, not a sophisticated intel operative," North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows told The Daily Caller of Shearer in response to The Guardian's report.

Meadows, a Republican who has pressed the FBI and Justice Department for information regarding the Steele dossier, questioned the origins of the information in the Shearer memo.

"Did the information come from Hillary Clinton?" he asked.

During the Bill Clinton sex scandals of the 1990s, Shearer allegedly worked with private investigator Terry Lenzer to dig into the histories of some of the women who had accused Clinton of sexual misconduct.

He was also reportedly investigated by the State Department inspector general in the 1990s for misrepresenting himself as a U.S. government official during negotiations with a Bosnian warlord accused of genocide.

Shearer, whose brother-in-law is Brookings Institution president Strobe Talbott, also worked alongside Sidney Blumenthal, a former Clinton White House aide also known as a Clinton family fixer.

He also worked with Blumenthal sending Hillary "intelligence briefings" on Libya.

Remember that Sidney Blumenthal was interviewed by the FBI in connection with the dossier, per the reportage of Sara Carter?

Was it about this "memo"? Or was it about Blumenthal providing "intelligence" for both the Dossier and this "Memo"?

Update: The Washington Examiner, which is frequently embarrassing, is embarrassing once again, claiming that this unverified collection of gossip and partisan wish-casting might "corroborate" Steele's unverified collection of gossip and partisan wish-casting, since both mention the prostitute claim, I guess.

By the same logic, the widely-traveled rumor that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian is true because different people with zero proof or verification have told me that. (One who worked for the Bill Clinton administration, by the way. He said "everyone knows." But again, no proof. The fact that multiple people spread the same unsubstantiated rumors do not cause the unsubstantiated rumors to cross-verify each other.)

Although the Examiner has some great reporters like Byron York, it's owned by the same ownership as the Weekly Standard, and most if it is, like the Weekly Standard, a NeverTrump/FusionGPS garbage fire.